Joe Calendino leads a workout with students at Templeton High School in Vancouver, BC., October 21, 2010.Nick Procaylo
/ PNG

Joe Calendino leads a workout with students at Templeton High School in Vancouver, BC., October 21, 2010.Nick Procaylo
/ PNG

Joe Calendino leads a workout with students at Templeton High School in Vancouver, BC., October 21, 2010.Nick Procaylo
/ PNG

Joe Calendino leads a workout with students at Templeton High School in Vancouver, BC., October 21, 2010.Nick Procaylo
/ PNG

Joe Calendino leads a workout with students at Templeton High School in Vancouver, BC., October 21, 2010.Nick Procaylo
/ PNG

Joe Calendino leads a workout with students at Templeton High School in Vancouver, BC., October 21, 2010.Nick Procaylo
/ PNG

Joe Calendino leads a workout with students at Templeton High School in Vancouver, BC., October 21, 2010.Nick Procaylo
/ PNG

Joe Calendino leads a workout with students at Templeton Secondary School in Vancouver, BC., October 21, 2010.Nick Procaylo
/ PNG

This is the second of six profiles on recipients of the 2014 Courage To Come Back Awards, presented by Coast Mental Health to six outstanding people who have overcome great obstacles only to give back to their communities. Their inspiring comebacks will be celebrated at a gala dinner in the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre on May 8.

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when your behaviour is unacceptable even for an outlaw motorcycle gang.

Joe Calendino, the 2014 recipient of a Courage To Come Back award in the addictions category, was a “full patch member” of the Hells Angels, and heavily into drugs.

“I was doing crack, percs, oxy, smoking, drinking alcohol,” recalled Calendino before leading students in a martial arts program last week at a Surrey alternative high school to help keep youths from a self-destructive path.

“There were multiple fist fights,” he said, of his three years with the club’s Nomads chapter. “One of the reasons I was kicked out of the Hells Angels was for fighting in a casino.”

It was that assault in Kelowna that got Calendino arrested­­— and eventually saved his life.

In an odd twist of fate, one of the officers involved in the arrest was Kevin Torvik, now a Vancouver police sergeant. He attended Templeton Secondary with Calendino and the arrest was a stark reminder of how differently their lives had turned out.

They met again, after Calendino’s cocaine addiction had turned to a crack addiction and he was arrested for selling a $10 rock to an undercover officer.

Torvik visited him in jail and was shocked to find his formerly fit buddy and the once cocky and flashy gangster was now an emaciated crackhead.

“I was at the end of the line,” said Calendino, 46, now fit and athletic again. “I was lying on the prison floor and I was going through withdrawal, full withdrawal, and I felt like taking a gun and blowing the back of my head out.”

Torvik had brought him a bag of food from McDonald’s.

“I ate, he talked and I listened,” he said.

Calendino, who had tried to stop using several times without luck, told Torvik he had wanted to quit drugs. And in that moment of clarity, he also knew he wanted to help prevent kids who stray into drugs and alcohol or violence from making the mistakes he did.

In Torvik’s letter of support to nominate Calendino for the award, he said he was skeptical his old classmate would follow through on that plan.

Torvik urged him to call their trusted old teacher, Jim Crescenzo, for help.

Calendino made the call, which he called a turning point in his life. He was helped to get into treatment and to set up and follow a recovery plan.

He eventually made good on his plan to help teens at risk when he spoke to a “very hardened” group of youth at a school. He made an impact, and all the students graduated.

That was the seed for Yo Bro, a martial arts program taught by Calendino, a black belt in judo, that teaches the students, boys and girls, about discipline, self-defence and nutrition, as well as being a contributing part of a community.

(The program includes a separate Yo Girl stream, for girls only, which teaches girls how to say no to drugs and to “bad boys,” among other things, said graduate Amanda Tabert, 22, who participated in Yo Bro as well.)

After graduation, former students can return and become mentors themselves.

“They’re so proud of being able to give back,” said Doug Litke, who works at Central City Learning Centre in Surrey, where Calendino runs Yo Bro as part of the curriculum and as an evening drop-in program.

Principal Janice Smith said students relate to Calendino because he’s open about his own struggles with drugs. His story, which has been the subject of a play that was performed for youths around Metro Vancouver in 2010, told of Calendino’s pot use and drinking at age 14, when he started hanging out with street gangs.

But Calendino managed to graduate from high school and ran a number of successful cellphone stores for about 10 years before meeting up with an old acquaintance and getting involved with gangs and drugs.

His story had an impact on Brandon Johnson, 21, who graduated from the Newton Learning Centre in Surrey after getting expelled from a mainstream high school for skipping classes.

He heard Calendino speak about Yo Bro five years ago and immediately wanted to sign up for the martial arts instruction.

“I’m a small kid,” said Johnson, who often gets mistaken for a teenager. “I got picked on when I was younger.”

Joining Yo Bro meant giving up pot, which he did, and Johnson said he developed self-confidence and social skills along with the self-defence moves. He’s now training as a mentor.

“Joe has made me feel like the biggest guy in the room,” said Johnson.

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